Sorry if this is reposted material, as i'm new and I just made this up off the top of my head earlier today...
Would this system increase your odds on picking a good scratcher?
Step 1) Go to your state's lotto site and find the info for the # of prizes remaining in all the scratchers offered. If it's a good site, it will list each prize available for any particular ticket and how many of those prizes remain.
Step 2) put this information in excel, with column 1 having the prize amounts and column 2 having the prizes remaining.
Step 3) set it up to add the total number of prizes remaining.
Step 4) in column 3, copy and paste only those prizes that are 10x or more the cost of the scratcher (i.e. $10 scratcher, copy the number of prizes remaining of prizes having $100 or more).
Step 5) set it up to add the total number of prizes that are 10x or more.
Step 6) so now you have the total number of prizes remaining that are 10x or more, and the total number of prizes remaining in general.
Step 7) divide and find the percentage of prizes remaining that are 10x or more in value compared to the cost of the scratcher.
It would be pretty obvious that if you're going to be "wasting" your $10 (or whichever amount) on a scratcher, why not go for the scratcher that you can observe has more prizes remaining that are better then other $10 scratchers.
You can use this system for any cost value and also change 10x to 5x or whatever.
Using this method I found out in Virginia, the two $10 tickets to buy are "$500K Bonus Bucks" and "Million Dollar Madness" which each have 5.04% of prizes remaining at $100 or more. The rest of the $10 tickets are less then 4%.
Granted, this system does not know how many total tickets remain, as in losers and winners combined, but at least you'll know a certain percentage of those winners, if you happen to get one, will be 10x or more in value.
Does this make sense?